


Greed

by Rotpeach



Series: Every Nuance of Misfortune [5]
Category: Boyfriend to Death (Visual Novel)
Genre: Implied Necrophilia, Moral Bankruptcy, Murder, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-18
Updated: 2016-11-18
Packaged: 2018-08-31 15:27:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8583742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rotpeach/pseuds/Rotpeach
Summary: You didn't really think it would last, did you?





	

(It was always going to end like this.)

We’ve been sitting in silence and nursing the same beers for nearly ten minutes when Strade suddenly says, “Starting to get a little cold, isn’t it?”

I shrug, take a sip, and mutter, “Yeah, I guess.”

“Bet we’ll have some snow in a week or two.”

“Hm.”

“Soil’s gonna freeze. Not gonna be a lot of fun to dig, you know? I’m thinking it’ll be alright, though. The coyotes shouldn’t be going anywhere.”

Nervous isn’t the right word, but he definitely sounds off. It isn’t friendly small talk or careless chatter, not even rambling. He’s choosing his words carefully, trying to make it all sound meaningless, but I know better. I know him by now. Small talk is for prey. Thoughtless conversation is for accomplices. I don’t know what this is, and I don’t think he does, either.

He’s still trying to figure out what to do with me.

“Why do you always go out there to dump whatever’s left?” I ask. He doesn’t answer, glancing at me wordlessly and waiting for clarification. Not smiling. Not frowning. Just staring hard like a hunter with a fox in a trap and trying to decide if it’d be better to let it go or put it out of its misery.

Not for the animal, of course, but for his own peace of mind.

“In the woods,” I go on. “Where all the flowers are. You practically live in the middle of nowhere already.”

He chuckles humorlessly. “What, do you think I should take up gardening?”

“It’d be good for the soil.”

“Well, sure, but it’d be inconvenient eventually if the land gets developed any more.” He picks up his glass and tilts it, watching the ice swirl around. “I’ve been doing this long enough that I know what I’m talking about,” he mutters.

(And _that’s_  my least favorite thing about him, his ridiculous superiority complex and insistence that he’s an infallible expert who has never made a misstep in his life, because I sincerely doubt that’s the case. Strade is good, of course, but no one’s perfect. If he was, he would’ve fought the impulse to show me the girl in his trunk—the girl who started all of this, damn her for being so sweet and pretty, for haunting my dreams and calling to me even though she’s surely nothing but bones in the ground now. He never would have showed her to me because he would’ve known that this was going to happen, that the novelty would wear off and our personalities would clash and eventually it just wouldn’t be fun anymore.

He isn’t perfect no matter what he says, but there’s something to be said for not getting caught all this time. I know he must be good at covering his tracks and taking care of his mistakes.

That’s why he brought me here, to The Braying Mule, where he only goes to sweet talk the unlucky patron of the evening, and he hasn’t said a word to anyone else yet.)

“I’ve been thinking,” he says, pausing to give some buildup as if this is going to be anything important,

(and it won’t be because it’s too soon and he’s still thinking)

“about getting a dog.”

“Yeah?” I ask.

“Yeah. I’ve got a roommate who doesn’t get out much, and I think he might be lonely. I haven’t been at home as often as usual lately.”

(I don’t know what “roommate” is supposed to mean, but I assume it’s synonymous with “the person in the basement for the last couple days,” because I’ve been over a few times and that’s all I’ve seen.

Strade’s house makes me nervous. It’s got that barely lived in, Ikea display type of feeling to it, decorative bowls, candles in glass jars and landscape photography on the walls, not a single overturned rug or dish out of place, just the way a realtor sets up a property when a family walks through so they can “see themselves” living there.

“Come on in, buddy,” he’d said, and he’d grinned and guided me into the house with a hand on my shoulder, insisting that I leave my shoes on, pulling me towards the basement with an excited urgency.

If the whole house can be considered analogous to Strade himself, then the living room and kitchen is all my coworkers ever see.

But I am intimately familiar with the basement.)

“I guess I’d like a dog, too,” I say absently, resting my elbows on the bar counter.

Strade looks surprised to hear this. “Really? You don’t strike me as the sort to like animals.”

“Why’s that?” We’ve both abandoned the pretext of drinks, but we still pretend we’re paying attention to the crowd clustered around the TV mounted on the back wall talking heatedly amongst themselves about a hockey game. “Dogs are nice. They’re cute and attentive.”

“Ah, but attentive is the key, isn’t it?” he asks, sounding smug. “Is that where it comes from?”

( _Who the fuck does he think he is?_ )

“Where what comes from?” I ask stubbornly.

He cracks a smile for the first time that night, but it’s sharp and unfriendly. His fingertips walk up my thigh

(and I flinch reflexively and realize that he really likes my thighs, that he’ll probably fuck those up first if he gets half a chance).

“You know,” he says, and he keeps his voice low even though there’s really no need to. There’s nobody listening to us. Nobody even looking at us. Nobody who’ll notice when we leave. “Your preference in partners. If they can really be called that. Not really a partner if they’re not participating.”

“Then what about yours?” I shoot back, and turn to give him my full attention.

If someone were looking at us, they’d probably think we were flirting, sitting so close together, staring at one another heatedly. Bedroom eyes, they’d think, only because they’ve never seen what it looks like when someone has murder in their heart.

“Mine are partners,” he assures me. “Participation is still participation. Willing or not.”

(And I had told him, I’d _told_ him that I didn’t want to be there while they were still alive, I didn’t want to see that, but he didn’t listen half of the time and it was just something I’d come to accept as part of the package.

It had been a woman the last time, long hair and slender fingers, too broken to be fun anymore. She reacted when Strade and I came down the basement steps, pulled herself inward and whimpered like a wounded animal, but she didn’t think, her gaze vacant and her movements automatic. _This is what he thinks is beautiful_ , I remember thinking in disgust, and then, _he should put her out of her misery._

That _would be beauty._

“You like her, right?” Strade was saying, squeezing my shoulder. “She reminds me of your favorite. I’ve been looking, buddy.” He leaned in, whispering, as I looked into her fearful eyes, “You want her?”

I swallowed, thinking about her. Not the one in front of me, the other one, the perfect one. I couldn’t be sure. I couldn’t know, not when she looked like this.

Strade knew that, too.

The hand on my shoulder disappeared for a moment, only to return at my side, holding a knife I thought I’d seen before, still bloody. The woman tried to scream around the gag stuffed in her mouth and pushed herself back against the pole she was tied to, tears dripping down her chin and disappearing into her sweat-soaked bra.

“Anyone can be your type,” he’d said, words slow and mesmerizing. I took the knife from him with shaky fingers even as I told myself not to, told myself this was going too far, _this wasn’t me_.

But I looked at the woman’s face and I saw the one I actually wanted. I saw her, scared and lonely in the trunk, wrists tied together, shoulders hunched, telling me that she wanted me more than anyone else in the world, and I—)

“I don’t think you like to hear that,” Strade says, “but you know I’m right. You’re starting to get it.”

“I’m not stupid,” I say sharply, and I push his hand away.

Strade looks me in the eye and I look back, and neither of us move. I think he might be remembering something.

(stabbed her I stabbed her that was me I did that I

sunk the blade into her _face_ and it sounded good when it tore her flesh open it sounded like

peeling oranges and slicing raw meat, sick and wet and _satisfying_ , and I thought of her the whole time, thought of her in my bed and under my hands her hair slipping through my fingers her skin under my teeth her voice in my ears calling, calling for me to be her everything and I could have been if only I’d been the one to find her first

 _so this time_ , I thought,

_this time,)_

“You’ve changed,” he tells me.

I believe him. I blame him for it. I know I wasn’t like this before he brought her to the store in his trunk, bound just like when I’d

(held her still with a hand on her shoulder, sunk my nails into her skin but she just flailed more, she screamed and she cried and she tried to fight me but I was just trying to help I knew how to make it stop hurting _I knew how to make her beautiful but she wouldn’t listen)_

Strade tilts his head and looks at me wistfully, saying, “It doesn’t suit you, you know. You're more of a scavenger than a predator. I liked you better that way.”

I raise a brow. “Why? Scared of a little competition?”

He shakes his head. “No, buddy. You’ve still got a lot to learn.”

“I hate it when you say stuff like that.”

“I know you do.” Strade’s tone settles into an even, dangerously calm one, and I know he’s finally made a decision. “Prove me wrong.”

“What…” I look at him warily. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Prove me wrong,” he repeats without any elaboration, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.

(I drew jagged lines through her skin and shredded her face into thin slices until I could see her skull underneath, until her screams turned to pained gargles and she had gone limp, passed out from the pain, but her heart was still beating and she was still breathing and I wasn’t done _I wasn’t done_

but then I heard Strade behind me, laughing shakily as he said, “I was just kidding, buddy. You know I would’ve given her to you after I was done.”

He looked strange. His smile was smaller than it’d been before, more subdued. He looked right past me and at the woman instead, at the blood dripping from her mangled flesh mask of a face, and he seemed to notice something he’d never seen before.)

“I don’t know what you mean,” I say.

Strade studies my face silently, and then he nods, more to himself than to me. “It’s late,” he says. “Let me drive you home.”

“That’s okay,” I say quickly, sliding off of the bar stool. “Jane and I are gonna go see a movie, so—!”

“No you’re not.” He puts an arm around my shoulder and his smile returns, kind and inviting. I start to tremble. “Come on, you know I don’t mind.”

“I don’t need a ride,” I insist, but we’re already halfway out the door and nobody is stopping us,  _nobody is looking_.

“Yeah, you do.”

When I try to pull away, his grip tightens. I should try to fight. I should scream. I should do something to attract attention.

But I’m paralyzed with the same fear that I’ve seen a thousand times in the eyes of other people.

(We, too, were like animals then, staring each other down over the same dying rabbit.

And maybe it’s true that the wolf, as the one who’d chased it and caught it and dragged it across the woods bleeding and screeching for help, really did deserve every bite, but he was the one who’d pushed it towards the vulture and said, “want some, buddy?”

How could he blame the vulture for wanting something fresher once it had a taste?)

“What did I ever do to you?” I ask, voice shaky.

He laughs. “You didn’t do anything, buddy,” he says. “What’re you so upset about? I’m just giving you a ride home.”

I can see his car now, parked all by itself in an empty lot a block away. No door handle on the passenger side. Enough room in the back for a corpse. I know it’s now or never.

I put all of my weight into it when I shove him and turn on my heel, every muscle in my body ready to run all the way home if that’s what it takes, but

(Strade liked it better when people were more like animals anyway. He’d looked at my red, trembling hands and he’d met my eyes with his pupils blown and his mouth open and

I met him halfway)

I don’t make it more than two steps because I barely had any distance between us, and he’s there, he’s right next to me, he’s shoving me against the brick wall of the bar,

(and it was surreal for both of us, I think, it wasn’t normal. We tore at each other’s clothes and ran our hands over one another’s skin, we fell to the floor and we bit and clawed and hurt each other but we loved every second of it, or at least,

I did)

looking at me with that eerie smile, pleased because he is fixing his mistakes,

(it was strange, it really was, the way we were both there but I don’t think we gave a single thought to the other person, we both thought of the woman dying in the corner, he in past tense and I in the future, we both thought of her blood on our hands and her taste on our tongue, and not once did we speak to each other)

and he leans in, asking, with excitement coloring every word, “You know what comes next, right?”

I do. Of course I do.

(When it was over, we couldn’t look each other in the eye. I felt dirty. I think he felt deceived.

We both regretted everything.)

He slams my head back against the wall and it all starts to fade. Before I hit the ground, I feel him lift me up.

My last coherent thought is a wish that I never, ever wake up, but I know better.

I know how this goes.

(It was always going to end like this.)

**Author's Note:**

> next time:  
> -you know what happens next time


End file.
